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Monday, 16 January 2017

The family of a Nigerian woman, late Mrs. Oluwashola Atunrayo Gaska (nee Adefolalu), who allegedly died in Poland, has decried the cremation of their daughter’s body by her polish husband, Jakub (Kuba) Gaska, without their permission, thereby raising suspicion over her death.Shola, aged 36-year-old, went to Poland to study Architecture in 2000, but later met her Polish husband there and they were married in 2010.

Based on this, the family is calling on the Polish authorities as well as the Nigerian Embassy in Poland, the Federal Government and relevant agencies to investigate the sudden and suspicious death of their daughter and circumstances surrounding the handling of her body.

However, a statement obtained by an online news portal, News Express, the deceased’s family (Adefolalu) flayed Gaska for taking the decision even after their protest following the sudden death of their sister in circumstances the family deemed as suspicious.

A cousin of the deceased, Bunmi Jasmine Omeke, in a statement, said: “The news of the death of Oluwashola Atunrayo Gaska (nee Adefolalu) fondly known as ‘Sholly’ came as a rude shock to her family and friends back home in Nigeria.

“More devastating was the effect of the report of her cremation by her husband, just a few days after her death, to the eldest sister of the deceased, Mrs. Bola ‘Salt Essien-Nelson.” According to the statement, none of the family members (immediate or extended) was allowed to pay their last respects to ‘Sholly,’ nor were they allowed to sight her body.

‘The only reason given by her husband was that he was fulfilling his wife’s ‘wishes’. Her elder sister, Essien- Nelson, the statement further read, received a phone call about her sister’s death at about 11.00am on December 28, 2016. According to the sister, this call came just days after a chatty and lively phone conversation with the deceased in faraway Poland (December 24).

During this call, there was no suggestion of any serious ailment, she said. “To date, the only proof of Sholly’s death is a scanned copy of the death certificate with the alleged cause of death being secondary anaemia and ‘tumour on the uterus.”

According to Gaska, his wife fell ill on December 28, 2016. He told her that he rushed the deceased to the hospital and had his sister look after her while he went back to work where he got the news of Sholly’s death early on Wednesday morning.

Essien-Nelson had commenced travel arrangements along with her husband to pay her last respects to her late sister when she was notified by Gaska that the late Shola had requested that her body be cremated after her death and that Mrs. Essien- Nelson should be the only one to see her body before cremation. Yet, he refused to wait for her to travel to Poland to do so.

In spite of the many pleas, he went ahead to cremate his dead wife on January 2. Not only that, he held a burial service to bury the ashes on January 7 without officially informing any member of her Nigerian family. The late Olushola’s family is suspicious of foul play in the death of their sister:

“We understand Jakub has the final say over the funeral rites for late Sholly and as shocking as the cremation request was, we were willing to honour her ‘supposed’ wishes.

What we could not understand was why her husband has deprived our family of the opportunity of paying our last respects to our daughter, sister, niece, cousin and aunt,” she said.